Marilyn Pappano - Scandal in Copper Lake

“Why were you planning this trip?”

Another quick subject change, but Anamaria wasn’t flustered. She’d known the question would come up, and she’d chosen the simplest, truthful answer. “Curiosity. I’m a year older now than my mother was when she died. I want to see where she lived, to talk to people who knew her. Mama Odette and Auntie Lueena have told me a lot, but I want to hear what other people know that they don’t. I want to know her.”

Lydia nodded sympathetically. “It must have been hard for your grandmother, losing both her daughter and her grandbaby at the same time.”

“It broke her heart.”

“And yours.”

Anamaria nodded. She might not remember much of life with Glory, but she knew it must have been good, because living without her had been hard, even surrounded by family who loved her.

“You were a pretty little girl,” Lydia went on. “I didn’t see you often. Glory usually left you with a neighbor when she came to my house. But a few times, she brought you with her and you played in the garden while we talked. You wore frilly little dresses, and your hair was tied back with a bow. You’d say yes, ma’am and thank you and please just as solemn as could be. I told Glory she was blessed to have such a lovely daughter. And then she got blessed again.”

A lot of people hadn’t seen blessings anywhere around Glory. Instead, they’d seen a stereotype: an uneducated black woman, illegitimate children, no legitimate means of support. But Glory had fit nobody’s stereotype.

“You loved the flowers in my garden, especially the lilies. You have a sister named Lillie, don’t you?”

“I do. And another named Jass.” Lillie was five years older and lived in South Carolina. Jass was two years older and living in Texas. They didn’t miss Glory the way Anamaria did, but they’d never known her the way Anamaria had. They’d been raised by their fathers, by paternal grandmothers and aunts and stepmothers.

“And the baby would have been Charlotte.”

Anamaria looked up, surprised. “Charlotte?”

“Surely you knew that. Glory decided on it about a month before she passed.”

Another of those details that she’d shut out after the shock of seeing her mother dead. She tried the name in her mind: Charlotte Duquesne. My sister, Charlotte. Not just the baby, so generic and impersonal, but Charlotte, with café-au-lait skin, chocolate-colored eyes, wispy black hair and tiny features with the exotic stamp of all her mixed heritages. Having a name made her more real and made her absence sharper, more intense.

“So…” Lydia gazed across the table at her. “Glory used to say that you would follow in her footsteps. She said when you were three, you’d tell her someone was at the door a minute or two before they even stepped onto the porch. She said when you were four, all she had to do was think about fixing meat loaf for dinner, and you’d tell her no in no uncertain terms.”

Anamaria smiled. To this day she couldn’t stomach meat loaf. It was the Thursday special at Auntie Lueena’s diner, making Thursday her regular day off. “I wish I remembered more about her.”

“You were so young,” Lydia murmured. “It was so tragic.”

Before either of them spoke again, the front door closed with a thud. “Miss Lydia? Are you here?”

Robbie Calloway. Anamaria’s muscles tensed. Trust him to find them together; after all, less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d warned her to watch her step with Lydia.

The older woman’s expression remained distant, and her response was absently made. “Back here in the kitchen.” She was still thinking about the tragedy of Glory’s death. Sadness and sorrow tainted the very air around her.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway, then the door swung open and Robbie walked in. Except it wasn’t Robbie, but someone who looked and sounded a great deal like him. One of his brothers, Anamaria realized with relief.

He wore a dusty T-shirt with Calloway Construction stamped across the front, along with faded jeans, heavy work boots and a platinum wedding band on his left hand. He wasn’t quite as handsome as Robbie, but there was an air of blunt honesty about him. What you see is what you get.

Lydia’s smile was warm, motherly, as she reached one hand to him. “I was hoping you’d stop by this morning. I caught one of your people about to dig up my lilies in front yesterday. After the chewing out I gave him, he might not be back.”

“I told you, Miss Lydia, you’ve got to quit putting the fear of God into my subs. They’re just men. They don’t know how to handle a formidable woman like you.”

As Lydia responded with a laugh and a protest, Anamaria sipped her tea and quietly observed Robbie’s brother. He radiated contentment. He loved his wife, she loved him, and they were having a girl in August. They would name her Sara Elizabeth, after their mothers, but he would insist on calling her Angel.

It was so easy to see into some futures. So hard to figure out a thing about her own.

“Russ Calloway, this is Anamaria Duquesne. She’s new in town,” Lydia said.

He nodded politely in Anamaria’s direction. “You’ve met the right person to help you get acquainted. Miss Lydia knows everyone and everything that goes on in this town.”

Lydia smiled modestly. “Not quite…but I’m working at it. And in that spirit, did you come looking for me just to brighten your day?”

“Of course. And to tell you that the landscape guy will be over here at one, so you can scare him instead of his employee.”

She smiled again, looking totally harmless, Anamaria thought, but she would scare the guy.

After Russ left, Lydia said, “Those are the flowers your message was about. Mr. John’s prize lilies. I have an entire bed of them at home, and I’d transplanted some here. That idiot had his shovel in the ground about to uproot them when I stopped him.” Her expression turned serious, and she toyed with the teacup before finally glancing up again. “Do you have…You said there might be…”

“Another message from Mr. John,” Anamaria said smoothly. “He’s concerned about Kent.”

Another harmless message, like the lilies, she thought. But apparently it wasn’t harmless to Lydia. She stiffened, her hand frozen above her teacup, and the color drained from her face. As her hand began to tremble in midair, deep sorrow lined her face.

With a heavy sigh, she busied herself for a moment, straightening photos that were already straight, closing the lid on the pastry box, securing the small tabs that held it shut. Finally she looked at Anamaria. “Kent is my sister’s boy. He’s a Calloway, for all the good it did him. An only child, born to a man whose standards were impossible and a woman too self-absorbed to be any kind of mother. If ever two people were ill-suited to have children, it was Cyrus and Mary. Harrison and I did what we could for the boy, but no matter how much your aunt and uncle love you, it’s still not the same as having your mama and daddy’s love…and that’s all Kent ever wanted.

“Cyrus is dead now. That was no great loss to the world. And Mary still has a home here, but she spends her time traveling. Paying attention to everyone in her life except the ones that count the most. Do you know she didn’t come home when Kent’s son was born?” Her eyes glistened with emotion. “Connor was four years old the first time she saw him. She was in Europe when Kent and Connor’s mother divorced. She was in Asia when he married Lesley, his current wife. Connor will graduate from high school this May, but Mary won’t be there to see it. I hate to speak poorly of my own sister, but…”

But she’d lost the child she loved dearly, while her sister turned her back on her own child. The unfairness of it could cause a saint to turn catty.